Scripture Upon Scripture- Compassion

A friend and I have been reading some excellent teachings on a web site called MountainRetreatOrg.net
The crux of the teachings found there are about how we rather than allowing scripture to interpret scripture we have allowed men and his ideas and interpretations to do the interpreting of scripture instead of the Holy Spirit and the Word itself.
How true that is.

I want to share a little something that might help you understand better, what the writers there are saying. Tony Warren is one of my favorite to read. He has a wonderful gift of rightly dividing the Word of Truth.

For example, today in my quiet time, my prayer time, I opened up my Bible and was reading Proverbs Chapter 21:2-3 - Every man's way is right in his own eyes, But the Lord weighs the hearts. To do righteousness and justice is desired by the Lord rather than sacrifice.

I read that and meditated some on it. What does it mean for me as a believer?

I then, knowing this was the Old Covenant- the shadow- the typology of all the Old Testament is found in Christ, I went over to Matthew and begin to read. There must have been God's hand and direction in it, because I opened up to Matthew 9 and begin to read, and what did I come across but the Saviour interpreting the Old for the New.
The substance giving definition to the Shadow.

What does it mean to men, righteousness and justice?
In the flesh, the external, men could come up with many self interpretations from the Old.

But there was Jesus, giving the words life, and defining this justice and righteousness of God in verse 9.
But go and learn what this means, I desire compassion, and not sacrifice, for I did not come to call the righteous but the sinners.

Jesus here defines the Old into the New and leaves nothing open for us to define with our fleshly minds or opinions. God defines His word for us, if we but seek Him and not men for the interpretation.
The Holy Spirit was given to us, to guide us into all truth.
Scriptural truth.

I went back to the chapter, book and verse in Proverbs, just wondering in my reference Bible if this passage would have a foot note referencing Christ words on the matter in Matthew I had found, but found only another Old Testament reference.

I Samuel 15:22 -
And Samuel said, Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.

Once again, if we left this verse and teaching alone with no words from Jesus, man can take this and make it into a thousand different externals for you to live by, and call it obedience.
Religion does just that.
Then there is Hosea 6:6
For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

As we approach the New Testament, we have the book of Hosea near the end of the Old, where once again we see God declares what is better than sacrifice.

So now we have 3 Old Testament scriptures, which is all the Jews had before Christ spoke.
What did they do with these scriptures but throw interpretations of them into mens' ideals.
For the Pharisees, who greatly respected the writings of the Sages and the Tannah who defined these things in the Gemara, the Mishna, which became the Talmud, it meant everything but what God meant it to be.
It placed them onto a pedestal above the people, they stood out in their robes and religious garb, one could not pass near by without their religiousity hanging all over them.
They had their phalacteries, their robes, the Old Testament scrolls, and more to say to the world, "look at me, I am a church member, I am religious, I am clean, I am well".
The Pharisees loved to pray out loud for all to hear, bringing attention to themselves in the marketplaces.

Jesus throws open the doors of understanding of these 3 scriptures in His life example, giving the Word spirit, which brings life.
The letter of the law kills. It killed and kills even today. People are dying within the church and outside of the church because of the letter of the law, all those externals we so desperately grasp at other than Jesus.

Jesus declares the three commands into one - Loyalty, righteousness and justice and obedience all fall into one word, that only the life of Christ can produce in the believer - COMPASSION!

We as men, can devise methods, dogmas, and doctrines of law, to say one is obedient, loyal, righteous and just. We can even call men these things based on the criterian of the Old Testament instead of the New. We can do this based on our church doctrines, our denominational statements, our creeds and our fleshly wisdom but only Jesus can bring the interpretation of what God has always sought for in His people. Only now through Christ and the Holy Spirit can we now have revealed to us the interpretation of the Old. Now that the Holy Spirit has been given to guide us into all truth.
Scripture upon scripture, line upon line, precept upon precept of His Word , can we learn His desire (will) for our lives.
It is only here that for the first time, God dwelling with men, can it be made clear the meaning of the Old. It is only here, that the Spirit can speak, and when He does, men and their ways, their interpretations of Holy Scripture are broken down into little pieces and shards of their vain imaginations are silenced.
Man loses his ability to be in his own nature what God only can provide in the new birth of the Spiritual man.
Man is born carnal and will die carnal, if God never intervenes. God intervenes and calls a man, and gives him the new birth in Christ.
With that new birth though, we still have the old fleshly mind hanging around and without studying God's word and listening to the Holy Spirit, we remain carnal in our thoughts and do not have the mind of Christ. We remain without transformation of mind and heart, until we hear from Him who is the knowledge of God, Jesus Christ, Lord of lords and King of Kings.
Let us hear from the Lord, let us know all the scripture and not those we like to pick and choose from to fit into our own little carnal boxes. Let us let scripture interpret scripture as it does here.

We may have sympathy for others, we may even do good for others, but how often does it reach to the extent of the Saviour, that it goes beyond doing for those that we know, the crowd we hang with, the church members we pal around with, and reaches into the depths and mire of lost humanity to provide - compassion.

The compassion of Christ, who dared religion, dared it's religious leaders by doing all that was opposite of what they had defined as obedience, loyalty, righteousness and justice.
They were so far off the beaten path it was sorrowful.
It was the broad road to destruction that seems right to a "man", these Pharisees teachings and practices, these religious leaders of the time. How far oh! religious leaders have you swayed from the path of Jesus in all that you have called obedience, loyalty, righteous and just.
You missed it as clearly as they have.
You forgot - COMPASSION is what the Lord desires. COMPASSION is what only the Holy Spirit can produce within you. It is that compassion that lead Jesus to the sinners and not the religious. It is that compassion that led the people to Jesus.
It is that compassion that put him where no religious man dare tread. It was compassion that drew the crowds from the religious leaders to hear the Man of Compassion - Jesus Christ. It is compassion that drives some to minister too those that others would not speak to, nor associate with, or be seen dead with.
It is the Spirit of Christ that produces the living Christ within, that reaches out not in condemnation of the loss but in search of the loss to give them living hope and life.
It is compassion that the organizational church lacks today. It is the loss of all that matters, the Spirit of Christ within the body of Christ.
The church as Laodicea has lost it's first love. It has fallen from it's calling. That calling is to love the unlovable, as we are loved. We must not forget, but for Jesus, there goes I. There I am, right there in that man, lying on a corner street, fallen down drunk, with vomit upon his clothes. That is me! That is everything I am -without Christ.

Once again Jesus proved He was counter cultural. He was the radical revolutionary of all time. He didnt come to bring us more of what they already had plenty of - religion, He came to give us life! For He is life.

He worked on the Sabbath
He chose under -qualified disciples
He didn’t seek to be honored
He often was in the midst of undesirables
He was at constant full steam ahead in opposition to those who thought they were well - the religious.

Psalm 85:10 For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, And His truth endures to all generations.
Jesus shows us that truth and mercy always go hand in hand.

The Church has developed not unlike the Pharisees, into "catering to the well ".

· We have developed systems that take incredible care of the people.. in the church

· We are so good at taking care of the spiritually well that we are making them spiritually obese

· If Christ came for the sick and the sinners then why do we spend so much time with the well and the those who say they are righteous?

· The answer is because it is easier

The flesh finds it much easier to hide within our Ivory Towers of the Church building then it is to be that building which Christ seeks to build made of His people, the broken, the sinner, the lost.

It is not that the institution has not reached out and done some good, but often it has done it as an act of sacrifice, to gain the attention of the masses of the religious. To pat itself on the back and say hey! look at me. To pray loudly in the square so that others might hear and recognize it's religiousity.

It has not learned that COMPASSION IS DESIRED ABOVE SACRIFICE!

The Carnal man can do good, as defined by this world, but he cannot work up, create, develop, have it trained into him, preached to him, told to him -what Compassion is.

Only the living resurrected Jesus Christ can produce in us what was in Him.
He said, I do the works that I see my Father do.

Where is our dependency, is it on our sacrifice, our getting out of bed on Sunday, to make it to the building and then the rest of the week, after that single sacrifice we go back out living and acting just like the rest of the world. No regard for the hurting, the lost, the dying, the broken of this world. We have stuffed ourselves to the point of gorging ourselves into fat, lazy carnal men, with our religiousity. We have not been broken, and made contrite over our sin - our lack of compassion.

We have fed ourselves, clothed ourselves, washed ourselves, and then went home and forgot our first love. We have become very white washed, but inside- YUK!

For we love because He first loved us. He died for us, while we were yet sinners!

We were the unchurched, the drunkard, the abuser, the addict, the greedy, the liar and the tax collector, the thief. Inside each of us, dwells that same old flesh man, just waiting to jump up anytime out of the grave and show you for what you are. Anytime, he can raise his ugly head.
We disguise it with our denominational obedience and external definitions of what we think it means to be a Christian, we disquise it with do's and don't's and works righteousness. We disguise it with our activites in the building, our associatons with the other members. While outside the very external walls built by men and not by God, that you worship so much, there are thousands just like you, dying.
You are dead man's bones, that only as an Ezekiel that God can put the breath of life into. They are dead man's bones, that only those who understand Christ in you, the hope of glory can bring the message of life to. We need Christ, we need Him to fill us with his compassion.

Where is compassion? When have we been so full of Jesus, that we are drawn to gravitate toward those who hold a much lower position in life than we. When do we, feel broken and convicted by these words of Jesus, "I desire Compassion and not Sacrifice."
When will we ,as the EKKLESIA realize that all these external things draw us away from the very one, that can give us life that will be as a well spring of life to those around us?
A well spring of life within us.

When will we see, that all the religous practices and external obedience is nothing more than a detraction from the command of God? To be full of compassion.

Satan uses and devises every method possible to re-direct your worship as a believer.
Yes, he even uses the physical church, your church, my church and any church.
When we are so caught up in the external things of this world, we have lost our first love.

Only God can give the Spirit of Compassion, for He is the Spirit of all life.
Unless our dependency is upon Him, we have missed the joy of the Lord and our purpose in Christ. Unless it is He that is producing the works of righteousness then it is as filthy rags before the Lord.

All the sacrifice, all the works, and all your activities are mere wood, hay and stubble. They will melt down in the face of the presence of a Holy God who is COMPASSION- true love, real love, genuine love, the only example of love.

Here is Jesus, doing the worse thing possible to ever say He was religious, he has taken in a tax collector, he is sitting down and eating a meal, with the homeless on your street, the prostitutes, next door, the drug addicts that you prefer to lock up, rather than free up, the wife beaters, the abusers, the thiefs, the dredges of society and eating with them no less!
"How shameful,".. I can hear the religious gossiping now.

I really wonder, if Jesus would be allowed in to the physical church, seeing the crowd he hangs out with.
I wonder how many people would move a pews back to let him have front row seating for his friends, I wonder how many Pastors, would step off the podium and let Him come up and speak.
Have we been missing something in our interpretations of God's word?
Have we not been listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit?
Will we listen, or will we just keep on accusing Him, as they did?
Will we see the real Jesus, the real compassion or just go on playing church.
The Pharisees knew that game very well, and could even teach a few church members a few things or two.
The question is, will we grow tired of the lack of compassion in our own lives soon, or will we just keep on hanging with the religious crowd? While the world outside is sick and in need of a physician. We are the arms and legs of the Lord, when we are His. Are we reaching to build our own kingdom, or His? Do we have a broken and contrite spirit which only the Lord can heal and then work through us to heal the broken outside.

I pray for myself tonight as I end this to head for my bed, which there are probably plenty of people tonight whose only bed is a cold hard concrete one, under some viaduct somewhere, Lord fill me up with you so much that I too will have compassion. The Gospel preached without the living God as our Compassion is nothing but words, and words are a dime a dozen. Father, give me compassion, make me compassionate, break my heart for the lost, break my heart for the poor, for those in the yoke of bondage of sin - for Lord you have shown me, this is the fast that you desire of your people. This is the call of the EKKLESIA- God's Church, His dwelling place, in His people. Make me, and mold me, into COMPASSION, by your will. Let it be, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

COMPASSION IS DESIRED ABOVE SACRIFICE!

Dr. J.